On such walking or camping trips, particularly ones of lengthy duration, it is important that both the weight to be carried, and the space occupied by the contents of the main backpack, is minimized. It is well known for sleeping bags, which in use are quite bulky, to be compressed by stuffing into a so-called stuff sack and for the sack to be further compressed by use of a number of pull straps attached to one end of the sack and which engage with locking clips attached to the other end.
Such a known compression stuff sack is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,267,868, FIG. 1 of which, for convenience, is reproduced as FIG. 1 in the illustrations of the present specification. Pull straps 10 attached to the top of cylindrical sack 11 at 12 are radially disposed about the periphery of sack 11 (two of four such pull straps can be seen in FIG. 1). Straps 10 are fed through a return anchor buckle 13 attached to the base of sack 11 at 14. In known bags, a flap 15 is disposed within the upper opening of sack 11 and a pull cord 16 with locking toggle 17 allows the stuff sack to be closed in known manner.